


when all you've ever said is all that will remain

by lastwingedthing



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: F/F, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27440827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastwingedthing/pseuds/lastwingedthing
Summary: Tissaia and Yennefer, over the years.
Relationships: Tissaia de Vries/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 6
Kudos: 66
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2020





	when all you've ever said is all that will remain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moonfishes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonfishes/gifts).



Sometimes Tissaia will go more than a century between visits to the cities of the Northern kingdoms. There are few good reasons to ever leave Aretuza, unless there is a potential student to be investigated, and conduit moments are surpassingly rare. Even then, Tissaia rarely goes in person unless there is something particularly intriguing about the child.

It is no more than fifteen years after she brings Yennefer to Aretuza before she visits Vengerberg again.

This time she goes to the city proper, seeking a prosperous shopkeeper’s family in the river district living in four well-furnished rooms above their shop. It is so far from the hamlets on the city outskirts, where dirty farmers raise pigs and grow vegetables for the townsfolk, that it might as well be a different city.

There is no real reason to be reminded of the best – most infuriating – student she has ever taught, Tissaia tells herself. She has come here only for duty.

There are two children in the family, twins, a boy and a girl with the same broad faces and dark smiling eyes. A little younger than usual, but still a possible prize for Aretuza or Ban Ard. But it is not immediately apparent to Tissaia which is responsible for the conduit moment, a rosebush flowering out of season in the midst of a snowstorm. And in person neither child seems particularly promising. Once their mother brings them to be shown to Tissaia the children do little more than giggle and whisper to each other behind their hands. Both seem immature for their age, and indeed the act with the rosebush indicates a certain frivolity, a lack of seriousness that does not bode well for the duties of a sorceress or sorcerer.

By the mother’s account, the children are both playful, good at simple sums and practical jokes but little else; poor students, but very popular with their friends among the neighbouring children. The family already plan to leave the shop to their daughter – the elder by a handful of minutes – and give the son to a fellow family of shopkeepers living across the street; in six or seven years he will be wed to their eldest daughter and inherit a livelihood with her through the marriage.

The children do not seem upset to have their lives already decided for them. Rather, they seem reassured to know their places in the world, contented – even happy?

So there are children who have happy childhoods, after all.

Half an hour of testing, disguised as merely sipping tea with their mother, reveals that it is likely that _both_ children grew the rosebush together – their weak powers amplifying each other just enough to make the act possible.

Alone, neither would be worth taking to Aretuza or Ban Ard, and they cannot be kept together. There is a certain use the girl might offer to Aretuza, and the same for the boy – Ban Ard has its own set fate for boys who cannot control their chaos – but they are almost too weak to be worth the effort. So Tissaia tells herself.

Tells herself she is not remembering Yennefer’s violet eyes as a girl, the blood dripping down her wrists, her face when her father agreed to sell her. Not Tissaia’s own long-forgotten (buried) childhood. Such things are in the past, and were necessary, to become what they are now.

Neither does Tissaia think of the way the twins laughed together as they were released to skid down the stairs, the matching broad smiles on their faces and their shared private jokes. That the children are happy – that she cannot tell herself that she is saving them from something worse than Aretuza’s discipline – is immaterial to the decision. It might be comforting to tell herself that she saves girls like Yennefer from lives of miserable drudgery, but she knows herself too well to think of herself as any kind of hero.

Nevertheless... she will not take these children, she decides.

Tells herself she is making the sensible choice. Tells herself she is annoyed at this waste of a journey. Nothing more.

Tissaia could leave Vengerberg at once. There is no real reason to stay. But instead she takes the final sip of her cooling tea with a smile, murmurs pleasantries, and slips outside the shopkeeper’s house into the icy, bustling city.

It is the second day of the winter festival, and despite the cold, the streets are crowded. There are little booths everywhere selling hot drinks and sweets and little carved toys for children, and all the houses are decorated with long branches of evergreens woven with ribbons in blue and white. The scythe-and-bell emblem of the harvest goddess is everywhere.

Aimlessly she walks north towards the palace district. The streets widen, and some of the houses are set back from the road, with space enough for gardens behind their broad stone walls. The bare branches of fruit trees and vines peep over the tops of the walls, promising flourishing luxury in season.

The great public square, however, has been cleared of its usual booths and market stalls. Instead a forest of blossoming trees hung with golden lamps is growing right out of the stone.

The illusion has been skilfully done. Each tree is unique with its own pattern of twigs and branches; each tree sways together as if brushed by the same breeze.

Children are laughing and playing together under the illusion of branches; older youths walk more sedately together in groups or couples. White blossoms drift down between them to land on children’s eyelashes and catch in pretty girls’ hair, and turn to snowflakes again only when they touch the ground.

The king himself is in the centre of the forest, sitting with his courtiers in a crimson-and-gold pavilion on a dais that likely _is_ real; Yennefer’s magic, while extraordinarily realistic, cannot protect him from the cold wind like the heavy layers of cloth in the tent can. The deceptively delicate iron fence and the gaudily costumed and armed guards between the king and the commonfolk are likely real, too.

Nevertheless the king is close enough to his people that he and his court can wave and smile at them, throw them handfuls of sweets or pretty ribbons when they choose. All the people Tissaia can see look delighted to be so close to royalty.

Yennefer is sitting at the edge of the little group, but she is still clearly the centre of attention. The king is always turning to her, smiling at her, looking at her out of the corner of his eye.

She is managing him well, Tissaia thinks dispassionately. She doubts Yennefer has been foolish enough to sleep with him. This king wants a romantic dream, the perfect woman he can yearn for, who will never disappoint him – never accepting that every woman will disappoint him once he has had her. The only way to control that kind of man is to keep him at arm’s length, but keep tight hold of the leash.

Yennefer seems unconcerned by the need to manage his attention. She seems pleased with herself, her smile almost smug. Likely she conceived and engineered this whole event, not merely the magic, which is a masterwork of illusion that Tissaia herself would be hard-pressed to mimic. A display like this will remind Vengerberg of the king's generosity and power, strengthen loyalties that may be needed on another, less peaceful, day.

There are other ways to help a city love its ruler; food and schools and healers might do even better than pretty illusions. But Aedirn is already wealthy, and its people love dazzle and spectacle, love a show above all else.

Tisssaia ought still to be angry over the manipulations that gave Yennefer this position. But in her heart she knows she was right the first time; _this_ was where Yennefer was meant to be. Serious, straightforward Fringilla would never have thrived here, Tissaia thinks, and feels the old anger again in her chest at Artorius and Stregobor's manipulations. Some in the Brotherhood might operate purely on self-interest and nepotism, but Tissaia always does what is best for her students. She knows them better than anyone. She knows what they need.

Nilfgaard may not have been a glamorous assignment, but it was challenging in a way that would suit few of her students. It needed patience, resilience, self-reliance; serving there was helping Fringilla to draw out her best qualities. She would grow into a competent sorceress there, even if she would never be great. But Fringilla’s self-assured steadiness would have been wasted in Aedirn – as Yennefer’s brilliance would have been wasted in the grim south.

Here, now, Tissaia watches Yennefer shine for a time before she leaves. _I have done well_ , she tells herself. There is no need to disturb her former student now.

She sees, but does not let herself notice, the brittle edge to Yennefer’s smile.

_Ungrateful_. _After all I have done for her. How could she?_ Now that she is back in the safe privacy of her own room, Tissaia cannot stop pacing. Everything she had said and done – everything _Yennefer_ had said – in that stolen room in Rinde was running through her head. To have risked so much to warn Yennefer – risked not only her own political capital among the Brotherhood, but Aretuza itself – and to be returned with nothing but sneering sarcasm…

And the worst of it is that she did not mean the offer to take Yennefer back only as charity. Yennefer could still do so well as a teacher in Aretuza. Tissaia knows it.

She looks around her rooms with new eyes, seeing them fresh again as she has not done in many years, comparing them in her mind's eye to the tawdry borrowed finery in the rooms she just left. Tissaia's rooms are not luxurious - perhaps even austere - but nevertheless each item has been chosen carefully for skill in construction as well as perfection in function. Everything has its place, everything is well-made to last the years; the heavy oak desk, for example, is only a handful of years younger than Tissaia herself.

There is peace here. Order. Everything has its use, and has been made to serve well.

Yennefer is in need of this peace, Tissaia thinks.

It is normal to be dazzled by the glitter of court politics, when young, and normal to later lose faith in the Northern kings. It is true they are generally self-serving, even corrupt; it is true that a sorceress must endure many petty demands on her talents if she wants to do good.

There is a reason all sorceresses must become beautiful before they take their place in the courts.

But for all its flaws it is the system that has guided and shaped the Northern kingdoms for centuries. A single finger tilted on the scales at the perfect moment may do far more good than an army can. _That_ is why they serve. Why can Yennefer not see it?

She could have come to Aretuza. She would have done well here, among the students – very well.

Tissaia too grew tired of court politics long ago, and found her faith again among the young. The best thing she can ever do for the world is to make sure that the next generations leave Aretuza strong.

Stronger, at least, than she herself had been, all those years ago.

But Yennefer…

She sighs, and sits for a moment. Her students likely need her attention. Automatically, without thinking, she lifts one hand and begins the small twisting movements with her fingers that keep her hair perfectly smooth and neat, her dress impeccably tidy.

Perhaps she is making a mistake. She spoke to Yennefer as if she was still the wise elder, as if Yennefer still needed her guidance, like a student; but of course Yennefer is already a woman grown. Far more than that. An ordinary woman Yennefer’s age might be a grandmother several times over, facing down the last decades of her life.

Sorceresses choose a different path. They need not decline. They need not brace themselves for an ending.

Once they tire of a path, they may simply begin again… as, it seems, Yennefer has chosen to do. Only her new beginning looks like waste and stagnation, to Tissaia. She is throwing herself away.

Tissaia thinks again of meeting Yennefer’s eyes in the mirror, her slow sleepy smile, her hands moving through the fall of her hair, and her heart pounds again. In anger?

Decades ago she had found a way to manage Yennefer. But this new woman is half a stranger.

And yet Yennefer, still. The brilliant brittleness, the surface glamour stretched over endless yawning need.

_You would be happy here, Yennefer. True purpose could satisfy that hunger in you._

_I could make you happy –_

Annoyed with herself, Tissaia stands abruptly. There has been enough wallowing in her own irritation. She has a greater purpose.

 _Control_. Perhaps there is still time for Yennefer to learn.

“And what is the great Tissaia doing in a dive like this?”

The voice is rich and smooth, and too familiar. Tissaia does not let herself flinch as she turns.

“I might ask the same thing of you. Is this the freedom you gave up everything for? Bad ale and worse music in a drafty inn that smells like a stable?”

“The ale’s not so bad,” Yennefer said, smiling into the depths of her own cup. “You just haven’t learned to appreciate it.”

That’s only partially true. Tissaia grew up drinking wine – prefers wine – but of course she can tolerate ale to be polite, when it is needed. Good ale.

She takes another sip from her cup and lets herself wince. Ignores Yennefer’s smile.

“Well?” Yennefer asks, after a moment that stretches out too long. “I’m here because I’m a disappointment who threw away my potential, as I’m sure you’re about to remind me. Don’t tell me you’ve made the same choice?”

Tissaia looks at Yennefer, meets her eyes.

“Why do you think, Yennefer? There was a conduit moment. I'm here to bring the girl home.”

The playfulness drops from Yennefer’s expression, as sudden as a blown-out candle.

“Don’t,” she says, very quietly. “Don’t ruin another life.”

Tissaia keeps looking at her. The tiny expressive lines folding at the very corners of her eyes, the pulse beating in her throat. In the small details, Yennefer's face has changed very little since Aretuza.

“Will I ruin it?" Tissaia says at last, quietly. "Her mother was raped by a Redanian soldier, and killed herself when the girl was a baby. Her uncle took her in and has been using her as a servant since she could walk. I suspect he’s been raping her, too, given some of the gossip here and what she did to him - when her conduit moment came she tore him to pieces with her mind. The villagers will likely burn her, if I don’t take her from the cellar where they’ve locked her. She'll have a life in Aretuza, or no life at all.”

Yennefer is tracing a pattern in the spilled ale in front of them with one finger. The motion seems absent and wandering, but her other hand is clenched in a fist on the table, knuckles white.

“Oh, so sad,” she says, low. “That’s even sadder than my childhood, Tissaia! A wonderful appeal to the heartstrings. Did you come up with the story yourself, or did you take it from a bard’s song?”

“Haven’t you been paying attention to anything in this town?” Tissaia answers her, just as quiet. “It’s all true.”

She stands. Goes to leave. There’s a deep sadness in her chest, an ache. She just wants Yennefer to understand.

But we don’t always get what we want in life. Tissaia has learned that. Yennefer has not.

“You don’t have to do this,” Yennefer says from behind her. Despite her own best instincts Tissaia turns to look at her again.

“You don’t have to do it this way,” Yennefer says again. “You could just – save her. Don’t take her to Aretuza. Don’t make her pay a price for her freedom she won’t understand until it’s too late.”

Yennefer’s eyes are dark and pleading, almost wet. She is all seriousness now, all need.

“No,” Tissaia says, very slowly. “We all must pay. That is how the world works, Yennefer.”

 _It isn’t fair!_ Tissaia can almost hear Yennefer thinking the words, like she is a girl again. But she doesn’t say them out loud.

“I can give her power. Control. Perfect beauty. _Immortality_." Tissaia's voice is almost pleading now, too raw. But she can't stop it. She can't find her own control. "Isn’t that enough? To pay for a few years of discipline and the removal of an inconvenient ability most of us are _pleased_ to give up?”

Yennefer puts down her cup so quickly it skids across the table, spilling the dregs of her ale, and stands.

“You don’t understand me. You’ve never understood me or my choices. But do not mock me.” Yennefer is visibly angry, now. Those lovely violet eyes dark with it.

Tissaia almost speaks, hesitates, as Yennefer storms across the room towards the door. She could leave, now. She could do it. She doesn’t need Yennefer’s help or her approval, she never has.

“It wasn’t mockery, Yennefer,” she says instead, walking quickly to keep up. “It was only the truth. Few of us think as you do. Just because you regret your choice does not mean others will.”

“Was it a choice? Really?”

“Yennefer – ”

“Sometimes you don’t know what something means to you until you lose it. You had no right to take my choices from me!”

Cold, fresh night air hits them like a slap as the door opens. Tissaia considers prudence. Changes her mind.

“You don’t truly want to be a mother, Yennefer. You never have. Or you would have come to Aretuza with me, and served as a mother figure to girls who need you. You only want your own child because you’ve been told you can’t have it. But you wouldn’t know what to do with a real child.”

Astonishingly, Yennefer stops dead and laughs. “A _mother figure_? Is that what you think you were to us? To me?” Yennefer stares at her, shaking her head. “You’re even more of a fool than I am, Tissaia. I had a mother. We all had mothers. Don't you remember mine? She watched you buy me like I was worth less than a wiggling piglet and didn't stop you. But at least she looked sad about it.”

Tissaia says nothing. Meets Yennefer’s stare with her back straight, her posture perfectly poised. This is not how she expected Yennefer to react. It’s throwing her, sending her off balance – but isn’t that normal, for Yennefer? She will manage.

But the silence between them goes on too long; something feels taut between them. Stretched.

Then Yennefer reaches out and touches her. Traces a line down her cheek almost to the corner of her mouth.

Tissaia’s lips part, but she cannot find the words to speak.

Yennefer steps away again, one quick pace back.

“You still understand nothing about what I want," she says. "Even if you're right, even if I’m the only sorceress in centuries who would ever want a child of her own – how could I go to Aretuza? How could I let myself care for girls who might end swimming mindlessly in the pools? I’ve betrayed enough people, Tissaia. I won’t do it to girls who trust me.”

 _I would never have done it to you,_ Tissaia thinks. But that hardly makes it better.

“It is a kindness,” Tissaia says thickly, instead, in words she has practiced over and over. “It saves them from themselves. There are far, far worse fates for those who have lost control of their own chaos than a life spent in peaceful dreaming.”

There are times – black days, black years – when Tissaia envies those girls. Her sisters, her children, who were not strong enough for the burdens of the world she must bear, who have been released to rest and drift in peace.

At times she tells herself that she has forgotten their names, but that is a lie.

“I can’t,” Yennefer says to her, almost gently.

There is a deep ache in Tissaia’s chest. Why does this hurt so much? Why does she care?

“It’s your choice,” Tissaia says at last. “I cannot force you to see sense.”

“Not anymore,” Yennefer says, almost smiling.

Tissaia inclines her head. In a moment, she will step back. She will leave.

In a moment, in a moment…

Instead Yennefer clenches her fists and steps _forward_ , instead. Takes Tissaia’s shoulders in her hands and kisses her hard on the mouth.

Tissaia’s head is swimming, her knees weak. Yennefer’s warmth, the scent of her, is overwhelming. Her mouth is soft and tender, at first, but then she bites down with sharp white teeth and heat races up her spine, like sparks in kindling.

Tissaia is kissing her back. Tissaia is kissing Yennefer. Soft lips, the little flickering pressure of a tongue, Yennefer’s hands cupping and squeezing at Tissaia’s shoulders – Tissaia’s own hands somehow firm around Yennefer’s waist -

Tissaia has always thought Yennefer was needy, _hungry_ , but until this moment she has never realised that she herself can _want_ this much.

Yennefer is smiling when she finally withdraws, almost smug. As if she’s won something. But her hands are trembling very slightly.

Tissaia almost reaches out for her again. Almost.

But then instead a portal opens behind them, a swirl of cold white air like clouds of breath, visible even in the darkness.

Yennefer steps back into it without looking and is gone. But to Tissaia it feels as if her smile is burned into the air where she’s been.

Tissaia waits in the cold night for a long time after she’s gone. Saying nothing, thinking nothing. Feeling –

But it doesn't matter. Yennefer is gone.

At last she pulls her cloak tight around herself, pulls herself together. Leaves. She has her duty, always.

Her duty is enough.


End file.
